Meeting Support Institute

Meetings organisers can get concrete thinking from their delegates using plastic bricks. Katherine Simmons explains

Utter the word ‘meeting’ to a colleague and you’ll be more likely to be greeted with a grumble than a giggle.

At VisitBritain’s National Meetings Week launch at Event UK this September, even our national tourist authority concluded that many people see the business of holding a  meeting as being a complete waste of time. Usual complaints include that meetings take too long, they’re boring, and are often dominated by the same people leaving others struggling to get a word in edgeways. Confex Group event director Duncan Reid even called for the phrase “meetings industry” to be scrapped because of its “negative connotations,” to be replaced with the younger, funkier, branding of “events.”

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Human beings just aren’t hard-wired for traditional meetings. Katherine Simmons talks to professor Ib Ravn, who evolved the format to create a natural environment for communication.

In previous articles in the Anatomy of a Meeting series, we’ve delved a little deeper into the failings and the foibles of the adult learner. We have a concentration span of just half an hour if we are lucky and if we’re talked at too long without being asked our opinion, we’ll probably just rebel and ignore whatever the speaker says anyway.

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Want to see real results from your conferences? Try making your delegates use their hands to creatively solve problems. Katherine Simmons explains

In recent months we’ve been exploring how to get the best out of conferences by creating a multi-sensory experience for our delegates. So far, we’ve looked at how sight, sound and smell can be used to positively enhance participants’ experience. We’ve also considered that people have different preferences for how they learn best, their best methods might be any of or a combination of the following modalities: audial, visual, reading and writing; or kinesthetic – a hands on experience-based approach.

Delegates are rarely given the chance to engage their hands in a traditional meeting set up. And it seems meeting organisers make a common mistake of separating the mind from the body when it comes to helping their delegates to learn.

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Do your meetings always come up roses, or do delegates smell a rat? Katherine Simmons reports on how olfactory experiences can be harnessed to aid concentration

Smell is the sense which can knock your socks off.

The power of smell can instantly transport you back to a definite place and time, whether its sweet peas in your grandmother’s garden or the vile stench of the Portaloos at a music festival. Leading scientists argue that it is one of the most powerful methods of memory recall, yet it still remains one of the least appreciated senses.

Memories, complete with their associated emotions can be conjured up by a single smell. The association is a learned one. For some the smell of roses will conjure up a perfume or garden, but others may associate the scent with funerals. The phenomenon is known as the ‘Proust Effect’ after Marcel Proust’s description of an event in the first volume in Remembrance of Things Past.

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No doubt many of us have all experienced a situation where, after long hours of trying to solve a certain problem, we give up, and go get a break, only to come back and solve the problem within moments. This appears to be a somewhat commonplace situation. However, the science behind it is much more complex.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion Amazon.com Review
Arguably the best book ever on what is increasingly becoming the science of persuasion. Whether you're a mere consumer or someone weaving the web of persuasion to urge others to buy or vote for your product, this is an essential book for understanding the psychological foundations of marketing. Recommended.

Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology
The materials in Cialdini's Influence is a proverbial gold mine.

Book Description   Influence: Science and Practice is an examination of the psychology of compliance (i.e. uncovering which factors cause a person to say “yes” to another's request). Written in a narrative style combined with scholarly research, Cialdini combines evidence from experimental work with the techniques and strategies he gathered while working as a salesperson, fundraiser, advertiser, and in other positions inside organizations that commonly use compliance tactics to get us to say “yes.” Widely used in classes, as well as sold to people operating successfully in the business world, the eagerly awaited revision of Influence reminds the reader of the power of persuasion.

The American Robert Cialdini is professor in psychology and marketing at the Arizona State University. He is seen as the global authority in influencing.At conferences, that is what we try to accomplish: influence participants so they change behaviour and have an impact. Cialdini has defined six principles of influencing others, of which a few can be applied as techniques during meetings and conferences. The most interesting one is the commitment and consistency principle. You can read more about this and the other 5 principles in the book “Influence, the psychology of persuasion” (see books in the MSI KNOWLEDGE BASE).  The commitment principle is easy to apply at meetings.

Put the record on when presenting someone a cabernet Sauvignon, Rock will do. The wine will be more robust and taste stronger than if presented with no music. The same wine will taste much milder when enjoyed with a romantic ballad.  Listening to music can influence the taste of wine. ‘Cognitive Priming’ lies at the base of this effect, according to researchers at the Heriot-Watt University of Edinburgh. Specific music stimulates specific areas in the brain and when the brain gets additional stimulation by the taste of the wine, both sensations, influence each other: the wine tastes differently.